XXXIV.
The hilltops were flooded with sunshine when the party from Tres Hermanos reached them; the atmosphere was so clear, that looking back over the broad valley, spread with fields of maize and beans, and the half-tropical luxuriance of fruit and flower, Ashley could distinguish every break and fret on the massive front of the great house, and recognized with a feeling almost of awe the tall, slender figure standing upon the centre balcony. She waved her hand in token of God-speed. Strange, inscrutable woman! She had bidden him go forth as the minister of fate, she had furnished him with servants, horses, money, arms,—yet had spoken no word. Ashley felt as though he were an enchanted knight in an enchanted land!
The traveller bade adieu to Don Alonzo in sight of his cousin’s grave; then, followed by his two servants, rode rapidly onward in the direction taken the day before by the troops and Doña Isabel, by Ramirez and Reyes,—indifferent which he first should encounter, confident that sooner or later the full significance of the impulse that had led him upon his Quixotic journey to Mexico would be revealed. The little cloud no bigger than a man’s hand had grown so great as to overshadow his earth and heavens. He rode on as in a dream. The day passed, the night came, and the party was still alone. The guide had mistaken the way. That night they encamped but a league from the village of Las Passas. Ashley slept neither better nor worse for that; there was no voice to tell him it could be more to him or his than a score of other villages which lay in the recesses of these wild mountains. The next day he left it to the right, and set his face toward El Toro.
Meanwhile the march of the troops had been as rapid as the nature of the country, broken by deep ravines and at first offering a tortuous ascent to the table-lands, would allow. To Chinita, though the slow movement of the carriage was irksome and irritating, and the clouds of dust that rose from beneath the tread of the horses obscured the sights which in their novelty delighted and filled her with exultation of a new and expanding life, the hours passed as though winged by enchantment. In the joyous clamor of the camp followers and the scarcely less restrained hilarity of the troops, in the tramp of the horses, the clanking of arms, there was a subtile music that aroused all the energies of her adventurous spirit, and imbued her with an animation which like a flame within a crystal vase seemed visibly to fill and surround her whole being with strength and beauty.
Had the country passed over been as dull and uninteresting as it was in fact wild and picturesque, the effect of movement and change would have been still the same to her; for hers was a mind to be affected by the various phases of humanity rather than of inanimate nature. The landscape in truth offered to her view little of novelty, for in her childhood she had wandered where she listed, and her lithe young limbs had been as untiring as her curiosity. The succeeding cañons and hills, the slopes and cactus-planted valleys, were but counterparts of those which she had explored on every side of the plain on which Tres Hermanos stood. With ready tact she avoided recalling her unwatched, untended childhood to the mind of Doña Isabel, who received with a distaste which seemed of the nature of regretful shame any allusion to the life from which the girl who now called her Tia (aunt) had been rescued.
The use of this appellation had been brought about by Ruiz, in his evident uncertainty as to how the apparent relationship between his patroness and her protégée should be defined. He had tentatively alluded to Doña Isabel as the godmother of Chinita, a designation which some conscientious scruple led her to reject. The word Tia is used by Mexicans as a term of respect toward an elder as often as in actual acknowledgment of relationship; and when with some daring Chinita one day applied it to Doña Isabel, in answering some remark of the young captain, the lady allowed it to pass unchallenged; and gradually “mi Tia Isabel” took the place of the formal “Señora,” which hitherto had helped to keep their intercourse as reserved and cold as when Chinita still stood at the gate at Pedro’s side, and Doña Isabel had furtively glanced at her glowing beauty, and felt the hand of remorse pressing upon her heart.
The haughty lady felt it still; and that it was which made her lenient to a score of faults in this young girl that in her own children would have been deemed almost unpardonable. She did not admit that she loved her,—it is doubtful if she really did,—yet she strove by all the arts of which the long repression of her nature made her capable to win the heart of the girl, who she saw with suspicious intuition beheld in her one who had wronged her, and was even now withholding her birthright. Doña Isabel bestowed rich presents, but never a caress; perhaps Chinita would have spurned the last as lightly as she received the first. Ruiz, admitted to a certain intimacy by the necessities of the time, was impressed by the entire absence of any sense of obligation with which the young girl took her place with Doña Isabel, as if she had never known one more humble, while there was something in the cold and stately manner of Doña Isabel which seemed to shrink before the imperious force of character of her young companion.
It was at their first halt that Doña Isabel had, with unexpected hospitality, sent to invite Ruiz to share their midday meal; and, evidently with some effort, at the same time she bade the servant extend the invitation to the young American. Ruiz presented himself with due acknowledgments, but Ashley was nowhere to be found: he and his servant Pepé had disappeared from the ranks. No one remembered having seen them since they ascended the face of the hill of the graveyard; doubtless, it was surmised, the young man had grown weary, and had unceremoniously returned to Tres Hermanos.
Doña Isabel’s face clouded. Upon the next day she had hoped to part company with her unwelcome guest forever; and now,—part of her purpose in leaving the hacienda was already frustrated. Ruiz was scarcely less disquieted; a glance at Chinita’s triumphant countenance confirmed his apprehensions. Pepé, at least, had not returned to the hacienda, he was assured. The officer had had it in his mind to have the servant strictly watched; but it had not occurred to him that upon the first day he would attempt to evade him and fulfil Chinita’s wild project of summoning Ramirez. He inwardly cursed his own folly and the duplicity of Ashley, whom he hitherto had not for a moment supposed in sympathy with the plot. He and the young American had even laughed at it together as the foolish dream of an imaginative girl. Now to the suspicious officer’s apprehensions was added a burning jealousy. For Chinita’s sake the American had doubtless made her cause his own; and with such an ally, Ruiz reflected, it was not impossible that he might see himself confronted by the man who he knew well never forgave a slight, never left unrevenged an injury.
The manner of Ruiz was so grave and abstracted that day, that Doña Isabel was inclined to credit him with far more depth and earnestness than as the reputed suitor of Rosario, or the airy and flippant recreant follower of the notorious Ramirez, she had attributed to him. Ruiz had the art of involuntarily suiting his demeanor and conversation to those in whose company he was thrown. There was no conscious hypocrisy in this, for the desire to please was natural to him, and often served him in good stead in the absence of genuine feeling, and even under the sting of wounded self-love held him silent, and masked his resentment. Many a time in his life-long intercourse with Ramirez had he chafed under the General’s haughty patronage and made no sign; and it was only when he found himself thwarted in what was for the moment his strongest passion, that he began to question the designs of the chieftain to whom he owed all the fortune which birth or talents combine to make possible to other men.